Send SMS From Gmail For Free In India And Internationally

Chat feature in Gmail is capable of doing more than instant messaging or text chat. You probably know about video conferencing and voice calls from Gmail but now it went one step ahead and brought Free SMS in Gmail. You can send message in SMS via Gmail to your contacts from any country even when they are offline.

SMS in Gmail isn’t exactly new feature. I mean some of you may have already enabled it from Labs but used to get an error that mobile carriers is not supported. But now, Gmail welcomes you with “Free SMS in Gmail” pop up giving the list of mobile networks supported in India and 50 other countries.

free sms in gmail popup

In India, it supports Aircel, IDEA, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata Indicom, Vodafone (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Gujarat, A.P, Bihar, W.B. & A & N, Assam, N.E. circles only). I am still wondering why the giants like Airtel and BSNL aren’t in the list.

How To Send SMS From Gmail

There are two ways to send SMS from Gmail:

  1. Enter the phone number in the text box which reads “Search, chat..” and Gmail offers an option to send SMS to that number. You may have to assign a contact to that number before sending.
    send sms gmail
  2. If phone number is already associated with any contact. This is generally seen in the Google accounts associated with Android phones where contacts have phone numbers. In this case, open the chat window and click on More on upper-right corner of chat box and click “Send SMS”.
    how to send sms gmail

Things You Should Know About SMS in Gmail

  1. 50 SMS Credits or 50 SMS are free initially in every account. After that, you will have to buy credits.
  2. If you send a reply message, your SMS credit is increased by five.
  3. Each account has unique phone number.
  4. If you receive SMS from someone, you can reply to that number and person will receive that message in conversation.
  5. Person from any country can send Free SMS to any country from Gmail. (check the supported mobile operators)
  6. If you receive an unwanted SMS message from Gmail Chat, you can block future messages from the sender. Just reply to the message with the word ‘BLOCK’.

SMS From Gmail on Phone

This is how it appears when you receive SMS from Gmail contact. Phone number is different (not related with the user). Email ID of the contact is shown in email followed by the message sent.

sms from gmail on phone

As you can notice, the number from which SMS is received is a general/regular number not premium one. So, sending reply to this one will charge normally.

That is indeed a nice move by Gmail but I am waiting for the day when Gmail will introduce Email alerts via SMS. That is more important because Data connection may not be available all the time and some people check mails often.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 8 comments
MANSOOR AHMED - October 11, 2012

HOW TO SEND SMS FROM GMAIL ON ANDROID PHONE.

Reply
    Rohit Langde - October 11, 2012

    Hi Mansoor,
    Firstly, there is a Gtalk application on Android which doesn’t support sending SMS as of now.
    If you somehow open Gmail.com on mobile/generic browser of Android phone, you may access chat inside Gmail webpage. From there, procedure is same as mentioned in article.

    Reply
arunxea kumar - October 11, 2012

not able to send sms . showing>> Your message was not delivered.97******** cannot be verified at this time as a valid mobile number. Please check the number or try again later.

Reply
    Rohit Langde - October 11, 2012

    Does that number belong to Airtel or BSNL? If yes, then it cannot be delivered.

    Reply
      Abhishek - November 7, 2012

      Its because of DND Filter.

      Reply
Shams - October 14, 2012

Hello Rohit,

I am having some problem while sending the sms form my gmail account to an indian vodafone No , which says the particular No doesn’t receive the sms , do you know why i am getting this error.?

Thanks for your help.

Reply
    Rohit Langde - October 14, 2012

    Did you prefix the number with international code (91).
    Problem maybe temporary because Vodafone is supported and it worked for me.

    Reply
smita - December 25, 2012

hi.. how i send international sms to Cyprus

Reply

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